A hacking group is claiming that it has managed to circumvent the copy protection on Nintendo's Wii U. Nintendo is not commenting on the story publicly. According to the group who seems to have no formal group name, they were able to bypass the Wii U's copy protection and play pirated games via USB media. The team claims that it has "completely reversed the Wii U drive authentication, disk encryption, file system, and everything else needed for this next generation key."

They are calling their device an "optical drive emulator," and that it is compatible with all current Wii U models from all regions, uses an "embedded Linux system," and does not require soldering.

As we noted, Nintendo has not commented on this story publicly - including how it plans to deal with this new dongle. We'll have more on this story as it develops.

UPDATE: That was quick. A Nintendo spokesperson told Eurogamer that it's aware of the hacking group's claims but has had "no reports of illegal Wii U games nor unauthorized applications playable on the system while in Wii U mode."

Possibly a drive related exploit - they're common weak points in these systems, the first Wii crack I'm aware of involved a device connected to the ribbon cable between the system board and the drive, and most 360 hacks are just reflashing the drive's firmware.